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A report by the Changing Markets Foundation claims that Kenya is being swamped with waste clothing from other continents. The report, based on findings by the Kenyan environmentalist groups Wildlight and Clean Up Kenya, says that an overwhelming volume of used cloth is shipped to Kenya
A report by the Changing Markets Foundation claims that Kenya is being swamped with waste clothing from other continents. Based on findings by the Kenyan environmentalist groups Wildlight and Clean Up Kenya, the report says that an overwhelming volume of used clothing shipped to Kenya is waste synthetic clothing.
While the export of plastic waste is restricted under the Basel Convention, a voluntary agreement called the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal states that a third of the old clothes shipped to Kenya are reported to contain plastic.
Most of the clothes are from the EU, donated to charities after they’ve already had second or even third-hand use. According to Clean Up Kenya, the scale of the problem is increasing.
Its founder, Betterman Simidi, says the problem is that the market for second-hand clothes has become less about charity and more about big business. Because so many of the clothes are made with synthetic plastic fibres, they take a long time to degrade, heavily impacting the environment by polluting the soil and water sources.
The Kenyan Bureau of Standards is struggling to ensure that traders comply with their pre-export verification of conformity to the standards program (PVoC).
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The program is meant to make sure that imports are checked in their countries of origin by third-party inspection companies. The program has been running since 2005.
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